Archive for ‘Washington State’

Gun grabbers across the nation were elated at their ability to pull the wool over voters eyes in passing their ill-advised anti-gun measure, I-594 in Washington State by a fairly large margin in 2014.

Promoted as merely a simple background check requirement on private sales and well funded by out of state anti-gun interests, 18 pages of the most confusing words that even law enforcement opposed and has seen both the State Attorney General and the Dept. of Licensing shy away from offering guidance on quickly transformed into “just the first step” in what gun-grabbers erroneously label “common sense solutions” to gun violence.

“The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition–except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors–totally illegal.” (Richard Harris, “A Reporter at Large: Handguns,” New Yorker, July 26, 1976, p. 58.)

Once again, a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy down in Moore, Oklahoma as the sad news of a recently fired man has beheaded one woman and was shot in the process of stabbing another.

Yet another wake up call is given as we read that the murderer was a recent convert to Islam, “the religion of peace” that has been beheading people around the globe.

There have been calls from the Middle East to begin beheading citizens inside the U.S. while at the same time, our alleged “leaders” in Washington D.C. dilly dally around on sealing our borders and push for legislation to further restrict law-abiding citizens guns.

For those of you unable to attend Wednesday evening, the Freedom Foundation’s Tom McCabe and Scott Roberts speaking at an event held in Vancouver, Washington on April 23, 2014. Hosted by Lynda Wilson (R), candidate for Washington State Representative 17th Legislative District.

Amazing the steps the teachers union apparently will take to fight basing teacher evaluations on student test scores. Following is a full email sent to me that is claimed to have been sent out to all members of the WEA, along with the request to not reply, print or forward the email.

Fortunately, someone decided the public has a right to know.

You in the private sector do not receive the opportunity to miss work, with pay and have your travel paid to support or oppose legislation that effects your children. But the teachers union apparently does.

A common theme I am seeing in Democrat hopefuls for office this year is their claimed desire to tackle “dysfunction” in our political representation, ignoring that it has been their party as large contributors of “dysfunction.”

Of course, the intent is to claim that having any part of the government under a Republican majority and the rest a Democrat majority, as we see in Olympia and back in Washington D.C., makes it “dysfunctional” in such a way that Democrats are being blocked in what they wish to do.

I was preparing to do a post pointing out how it isn’t “dysfunctional” at all, but is what our founders intended, competing thoughts and ideologies coming together somewhere in middle ground to give the best compromises possible. Such a compromising attitude is what gave us our constitution after some real knock-down, drag out fighting.

We all saw the bipartisan Senate Coalition Majority brought about last year and the predictions of it failing. Yet, it remains and appears like it will for some time.

At a recent function, the question was put forth on whether or not it was successful. Two opposing views were given, one by Republican Senator Don Benton, who played a large role in getting it off the ground and the other by far leftist Democrat Representative Jim Moeller.

From the December 13, 2013 Clark County Republican Party Christmas gala, retired Washington State Auditor, Brian Sonntag, a Democrat known for placing the people over the party, in wrapping up his Keynote Speech, reminds the audience to stay engaged with elected officials.

Retired Washington State Auditor, Brian Sonntag, speaking at the 2013 Clark County Republican Party Christmas Gala Dinner at the Fairgate Inn, Camas Washington on what frustrated him most during his time in office.

Susan Hutchinson has been elected to chair the Washington State Republican Party, defeating three challengers that included local Clark County GOP Operations Director Christian Berrigan and interim party chair Luanne Van Werven, as well as Pierce County’s Grays Harbor County’s James Walsh.

Local favorite Christian Berrigan was defeated in the first round along with James Walsh, Berrigan receiving 11 votes, Walsh receiving 16. Susan Hutchinson Hutchinson received 39 behind Luanne Van Werven’s 41 in first round balloting.

The second round ended up with 59 votes for Hutchison, 46 for Luanne Van Werven who has been serving as interim party chair since Kirby Wilbur’s resignation.

It’s no secret there is a contingent of Washington Citizens wanting to prevent us from owning guns of our own. They have launched a citizen initiative, I-594 to impose the ill-thought out universal background check on us.

Watch the video below to see first hand how they are going about gathering enough signatures to get it in next years ballot. Please share this video

Good old Jim “sue your constituents to invalidate their votes” Moeller (D. Portland/Vancouver), ever the narcissist, is a master at diversion to make others look bad, while minimizing how he and those he aligns himself with may personally benefit off of the public’s money.

Second to none in arrogance, we have seen Jim put off projected in excess of $1 Billion budget gap to push through homosexual marriage, denying he would take advantage of it himself, successfully joined in a lawsuit to invalidate the vote of constituents and others in the state who have 5 times voted in a 2/3 majority requirement for the legislature to increase our taxes, worked diligently to strap Clark County citizens with higher taxes, increased license fees, tolls, increased gas prices and much more to force acceptance of Portland, Oregon’s financially troubled light rail and more, all the while portraying himself as some sort of ‘watchdog’ for the public good.

When it was revealed earlier this year of legislators writing off the expense to dry clean their clothes to taxpayers while in session Moeller was quoted saying, “dry cleaning is similar to other items [I] can expense, such as food or lodging, while the Legislature’s in session,” adding he considers what he wears during session as “his uniform.”

We were all elated this weekend to see the legislature second special session come to a close with the massive $10 Billion Transportation package Gov. Inslee wanted killed, ending over a decade of confrontations locally over the Columbia River Crossing light rail project.

While we were elated, some elected officials that fought so hard to bamboozle voters and force us into accepting the project against our will are very upset. One in particular, Jim ‘sue your constituents to invalidate their votes’ Moeller (D. Portland/Vancouver) is mad as wet hen, throwing hissy fits worse than any spoiled child I have ever seen.

Moeller has been throwing the fingers of blame everywhere this weekend, except of course where it belongs, right back at him since he did everything short of hiring hit men to take our major opponents of the project in trying to sell a bad project to benefit the city south of us in another state.

He lied, misrepresented, tried to bully, ridiculed, mocked, distorted claims and completely ignored any voice of reason in opposition and that alone was enough to cause many to push back even harder.

Whether we realize it or not, we all teach. Be it our children, our friends and acquaintances, co-workers or just people we meet in our day to day dealings, in some manner or another, we teach them.

But, that does not make us “teachers,” those who have chosen to enter the profession to impart knowledge in any one of our schools where we must send our children to learn reading, writing, arithmetic, history and other relevant subjects in hopes when they grow up, they will have the knowledge to become functional adults ready to contribute to society, raise families of their own and pass along their own teaching with who they interact with.

Teaching sounds like a very lofty and important profession, which it is. But, does that make being a teacher any more special or privileged than other professions we enter into? Does that make them exempt from the day to day struggles and budgeting we must perform in order to care for our families, especially in this difficult economic times we have seen over the past years?

That the Lazy C has a hate fest with State Senator Don Benton (R 17th) is well known in Southwest Washington and as much as it pains me to say, he didn’t help the cause with his public spat with fellow State Senator Ann Rivers (R. 18th) and filing a complaint against her.

Don has received little if any support over it and they did very publicly ‘bury the hatchet’ this past Saturday.

While I have no doubt feathers are still ruffled somewhat, I know of these people are professionals and understand they must work together in the Senate to reach a consensus on improving the lot of our state.

But apparently that isn’t good enough for the Benton haters down at the Lazy C who begrudgingly buried mention of the reconciliation in the online blog and not the front page as they did the spat. Nor are they willing to let it go as they continue to seek more ways to bash Senator Benton.

It seems shortly after any horrific shooting, where some crazed gunman goes on a frenzy shooting up another gun free zone, as we saw last year in Aurora, Colorado and the Newtown Elementary shootings, misguided individuals crawl out of the woodwork with their cries of “we need gun control,” “repeal the second amendment” and “pass an assault weapons ban.”

These and many more cries begin within minutes of such horrific events, receive lots of press and TV time and a lot of noise is made in Congress from self-serving politicians demanding a ban on any and everything in sight and without a clue of why there is a second amendment or that gun-free zones provide easy targets for malcontents bent on causing mayhem and death.

We saw this same scenario playing out after the Newtown shooting, but the noise level is increasing again as those misguided individuals are still screaming for a piece of paper with words on it, falsely believing it will protect them from the criminal element.

Representative Jim Moeller (D. Portland/Vancouver) sent out his usual spin the truth email this evening titled House Passes Budget – Senate Does Not Act laying all blame for a budget agreement not being reached on Republicans, as usual.

In the email, Moeller claims,

“Majority elected House Democrats have advanced substantial steps toward middle, compromise ground in striving for agreement with Senate Republicans.”

What Moeller leaves out is the steps the Senate Coalition Majority has taken to actually have another responsible budget and not just the regular burdening of the middle class with more tax hikes they can ill afford.